Arrival (21 page)

Calvin swore. He must have reached for his gun, because a second later Pryor shouted, ‘Put that down! We need him alive, Bruce! If this is a side effect of the fallout, then we need to –'

But another enormous crash – like something heavy being thrown against a wall – drowned out the rest of her words and the two of them thundered away down the hall.

We heard more shouting, further away this time, and more things getting chucked around and smashed. Crazy Bill was angry. And as usual, he wasn't holding back.

And then, suddenly, it all stopped. For ten minutes, we didn't hear anything else. Peter opened his mouth to say something, but Jordan told him to shut up. There was every chance that we were being recorded.

Some dark part of me started hoping that Crazy Bill had managed to finish Calvin off this time. Or, better yet, that they'd finished off each other. But I had a suspicion it wasn't going to be that simple.

We were almost at the point of going out there to see what was happening when we heard footsteps coming down the hall.

The door opened and Calvin hobbled back into the room. He was red in the face and his normally tidy hair was pointing in all directions.

‘Your parents are coming to get you,' he said. He didn't look happy about it.

We followed him out of the interrogation room, and I immediately wondered why Calvin had needed to ask Ms Pryor where Crazy Bill had gone. The path of destruction leading down the hallway seemed to make the answer to that question pretty clear.

As we went along, I had to step over a fallen door that lay broken on the ground. Not just torn off its hinges – this thing was snapped in half. A bit further up, there was a giant crack in one of the walls.

But it wasn't until we got back out into the big office area that we realised just how much damage Crazy Bill had done. The whole room was a mess of upturned tables and smashed computer monitors. Bits of plaster were still raining down from the ceiling. An air conditioning unit had somehow been torn from the roof and was now lying in a crumpled heap in the middle of the room.

Calvin led us back into the waiting room where we'd first arrived. It was completely untouched – obviously the struggle had ended out in the hall.

The front door swung open and Ms Pryor strode back into the building, holding a tissue up against her bleeding nose.

‘All under control?' said Calvin sharply.

Pryor nodded. ‘He's being transferred now.'

‘And Ben?'

‘Nothing life-threatening.'

‘Good.'

The guard behind the counter was sitting calmly at his computer, doing a good job of pretending that a super-powered maniac hadn't just trashed half the building. Calvin muttered something to him in an undertone, then he and Ms Pryor disappeared down the hall again without a backwards glance.

‘Transferred?' Jordan whispered, sitting down in one of the seats along the wall.

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘whatever that means.'

I could see that Jordan wanted to keep speculating, but I didn't have the energy for it. I collapsed across three seats, closed my eyes, and waited for Mum to arrive.

It had been the mother of all long days. And we were still alive at the end of it, which was more than I'd been expecting. But even that thought wasn't much comfort.

The end of the world was still looming.

And if the last eleven days were any clue, things were only going to get weirder from here on out.

Chapter 30

S
UNDAY
, M
ay
17
88
DAYS

'So, let's review,' said Peter, unscrewing the lid of his Coke bottle. 'We're trapped in the middle of nowhere by a wall and a wasteland and a bunch of men with guns. We've got Calvin and Pryor breathing down our necks, and even if we get around them, we've got no idea what to do next because they've just transferred our only source of information, and he was a homicidal nutcase anyway. We can't call for help, and we can't tell anyone else what's going on because we'd be putting them in as much danger as us. Is that pretty much the size of it?'

‘And there are eighty-eight days until the end of the world,' I added.

‘Right, that too.'

It was Sunday afternoon and we were sitting out in the park eating fish and chips.

All of our parents had swallowed the story about us accidentally getting lost in the bush. I'd felt bad about lying to Mum, but I guess it was better than the alternative.

Jordan and Peter seemed to have left yesterday's argument behind. I guess they'd come to some unspoken agreement that their harsh words were a result of all the stress we'd been under.

I looked up and saw Cathryn coming past, probably on her way to the mall. Although I knew he'd seen her, Peter refused to even acknowledge her existence.

‘You know what?' he said instead, reaching for the chips. ‘I'm glad I met you guys. Imagine all the fun I'd be missing out on if you hadn't –'

‘Officer Reeve!' called Jordan suddenly, getting to her feet.

Reeve wasn't in uniform, so it took me a minute to spot him. He was walking across the playground, talking to a curly haired woman and carrying a little boy up on his shoulders – his wife and son, I assumed. He glanced up to see who had called his name, then pushed on towards the park as though he hadn't seen us.

Peter bundled up the fish and chips and the three of us went over to meet him.

‘Hi,' I said as we reached the playground.

Reeve shot me a frustrated look and then turned to his wife and sighed, ‘Won't be a sec.'

He wrangled his son down from his shoulders with his one good arm, wincing a bit as the boy slid down his battered body. He set him loose on the playground, then pulled us aside.

‘What's the matter?' I asked.

‘We shouldn't be talking,' said Reeve uncomfortably
.

‘We just wanted to thank you for last night,' said Jordan. ‘For not –' ‘Sure,' Reeve cut her off. ‘No worries.' He moved to walk away.

‘What were you doing out there anyway?' said Peter.

Reeve stiffened. ‘Nothing. Just a patrol run.'

‘How did you bring us back inside?' I asked. ‘Is there a gate?'

‘Stop!' hissed Reeve. ‘Don't even – look, I know you kids are trying to get to the bottom of everything that's going on out here. But I can't help you.'

‘So why did you cover for us last night, then?' snapped Jordan. ‘If you're not interested in helping –'

‘Because if I'd told Calvin the truth, you'd all be dead by now.'

Jordan opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She stared down at the grass.

Officer Reeve glanced back over his shoulder to where his wife was pushing their kid on a swing. It dawned on me that his story about winding up in Phoenix probably wasn't all that different to ours.

‘Listen,' he said, his eyes back on us. ‘You need to know that last night was a one-off. Next time you kids get yourselves into strife, I won't be able to bail you out. If it was just me, then maybe, but I won't put my family in harm's way.'

‘Yeah,' said Jordan. ‘Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry.'

‘I don't know the half of what Shackleton and his mates are up to,' Reeve said. ‘But I've seen enough to know that they're willing to do whatever it takes to make sure their secrets
stay
secret. You kids are better off keeping your heads down – you don't want to get tangled up in all of that.'

‘Right,' I said, wishing it were that simple.

‘Good on you,' Officer Reeve smiled, clapping me on the shoulder.

He'd almost made it back to the playground when Peter called, ‘Hang on!'

Reeve wheeled around. ‘
What?'

‘Our bikes,' said Peter. ‘We left them out by the side of the road, near the boom gate guarding that warehouse place. Could you…?'

Officer Reeve shot Peter a pained look. ‘All right,' he sighed, like he was being talked into it against his better judgement. ‘Okay, yeah, I'll get them for you. But that's
it
. That's the last I want to hear from you three.'

We all nodded fervently at him, then left the poor guy in peace and went back to our spot on the grass.

Peter sat against a tree and started tossing our leftover chips at an ibis that was walking past.

Meanwhile, Jordan flipped open a design and tech textbook from her bag and started highlighting important sentences. It took my brain a second to even process what she was doing. It didn't seem right that we still had homework to deal with on top of everything else.

Then again, we'd probably have to make an extra effort to get it all done from now on if we wanted to stay out of trouble with Ms Pryor.

I lay back on the grass, wishing I could take Reeve's advice and forget that any of this had ever happened.

I wanted a way out. I wanted someone else to come in and take over. I wanted to wake up and find out that all of it was a dream.

I wanted
something
to happen so that I could go back to my old life where my dad was only a phone call away, and China had the monopoly on giant walls, and the only thing homeless people wanted from you was spare change.

But I knew that wasn't happening. Not unless the three of us somehow found a way to put a stop to whatever the Shackleton Co-operative was planning. Three kids against an evil billionaire corporate empire.

The sun beat down on my face, and I closed my eyes. I'd only woken up a couple of hours ago, but I was still exhausted from the day before.

I guess it takes more than one sleep-in to make
up for –
Suddenly, my eyes snapped open again.

A noise from somewhere across the park – barely audible, but definitely there. I couldn't place it at first. It'd been so long since… I looked over at the others. They'd heard it too.

Jordan dropped her textbook on the grass. ‘Is that…?'

‘Yeah,' I said.

Someone's phone was ringing.

www.thephoenixfiles.info

The countdown continues
in February 2010...

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For the first six months, Peter's life in Phoenix was
pretty normal. Hanging out with his friends,
annoying his parents, sleeping through school.

Then he found out the world was ending.

This small, locked-down desert town is suddenly
the safest and most dangerous place on earth
.

And the clock is still ticking.

There are eighty-eight days until the end of the world.

Chris Morphew was born in Sydney in 1985. He spent his childhood drawing comic books and writing stories about dinosaurs and time machines. After school, Chris did a short stint as a primary school teacher – definitely the second-best job in the world – and then started writing for kids and young adults.

He's still a sci-fi junkie, and his collection of all fifty-four
Animorphs
books has pride of place on his bookshelf. He believes there's no movie so great that it couldn't be improved with the addition of a spaceship.